The (Not So) Great Escape

Fugitive number one:

Fugitive numbers two, three and four:

Good News: The donkeys ran away today!

Bad News: Aunt Marilyn and Mother brought them back.




During the course of barn hygiene, donkeys slithered through the open gate into the back pasture. A section of fence had been knocked down, and before Aunt Marilyn knew it, there were miniature donkeys on the loose in a respectable neighborhood.

Mother rushed from wherever it is she goes all day, and met up with Aunt Marilyn and the donkeys cavorting in random yards well down the hill and far from home. While I and part of the Red Mare Herd grazed in the now open back pasture, Mother came into sight tugging one of the jennets behind her. She hustled the donkey to the Small and went to the barn for another wee halter. Julia's pathetic donkey cries rang out, and Mother encouraged her to tell those other donkeys to hurry home.

By the time Mother traipsed again through the back field, the remaining fugitives were in the closest neighbor's yard, and relatively easily secured.


I think they enjoyed their party... they are out there right now debating another attempt...

We've got everything here we would want... why leave?

I not only question the intelligence of the donkeys in this escapade, but the humans as well.

Why go out of your way to bring this back?

Really?

Poke, Lather Rinse Repeat

Mother started the neck stabbing shot series on Tuesday. Clean neck, stab, give me cookie, pick my feet, turn me out, more cookies. I like this routine.
 
On Friday she stopped by very briefly (she is ghost-sitting AGAIN!). She really only came up to say a quick hello and give me a treat. Unfortunately, she didn't bother to turn on any lights. I received my cookie with my typical dignity. She scratched my neck and face... and then a finger poked me in the eye. Um, oww. She apologized, but really, such accidents could be avoided by just giving me cookies and leaving; petting areas South of my head; or turning on lights, since you humans have conquered electricity.

 Presumably

Yesterday, Mother seemed happy to see me. She led me to the barn porch, and gave me my shot. I didn't really even feel it, but she assures me I received it. Mother is a presser, not a thumper.

She proceeded to pick out my hoovies, put some purple stuff on parts of my frogs, curry me... all is going well. Then she looks at my freshly rubbed and scruffed tailhead. She hooked up the hose.

Uh oh.

Mother, it is December!
"It's 60 degrees, Bif. And I'm just doing your tail."
Fine.

She didn't say that she planned to do a super thorough job since it might be the last chance for a good long while. She hosed it, she purple shampooed  it, she hosed it, she purple shampooed it, she hosed it, she purple shampooed it. She shoved some suds on my back legs, the not as black parts. HEY! Anything you shampoo gets rinsed, and I don't want more water!
"You're fine, Bif."
Fine.

She hosed all those parts off. She got out the medicated shampoo and did my tail really well all up at the top, underside too. UUUNNNN... that water is cold! I got rinsed very well.

She put the purple shampoo on my tail one last time. I stand, dejected. Rinse. Rinse Rinse Rinse.

She put the purple conditioner on. Rinse, rinse.

OOhhh, a really good muffiny cookie. Thank you, Mother!!

Detangler. She does my mane and forelock, too. Cookie, please? I was good.

Woo, hoo! Cookie!

Then I got to do a lawn job while she prepared my dinner.

I hope the next time I'm due a stabbing she just pokes me and leaves. I do not need to go through any of that other stuff again any time soon. Well, excepting the cookie parts, obviously.

Freedom for Comfort: Stalls

Recycled photo from last summer

Domestication requires many tradeoffs. Well, really just one, that all the others fall under: Freedom for Comfort.

In today's Freedom for Comfort installment, I'm going to tell you a little more about one of  humans' favorite Freedom-takers, the Stall.

Stalls are creepy for reasons other than the obvious lack of mobility. Most of them have solid parts up to nearly wither height, so when you are eating your hay you have to keep raising your head up to look about and make sure there are no predators at hand. Not all stalls are like that, though...

One of the hospitals I went to had a door (and a ceiling-to-floor window) that was barred, and you could still look for predators, even when you were laying down. That was nice.

Rood + Riddle Equine Hospital. Stock photo. Horse in stall is not me.

The barn with the groundhog had nice gaps between the boards between my stall and Jay's, which I thought was great. And when I came home from surgery, my stall at Aunt Marilyn's was a sectioned off part of the run-in, with two windows into the barn, so I could talk to and groom the Badger mares, and a half wall into the rest of the run in, so I could chat with Belle.

Photo from 2008. Gosh, that was a long time ago! Look how dark my face was. And note my beautiful Jeanie mare on the right... sigh.

The gate was a pipe gate with wire grid, so it was really see-throughable, and the stall was a double wide, so a lot better than normal stalls. Actually, when I lived at Uncle Jeff's, if I wasn't out with Snap my stall was a double wide there, too. That's the way I prefer if I have to be in a stall.

Another creepy thing about all too many stalls is that you can't touch anyone else. It's just you, and your own company, and four walls, and if there is no food left... I mean what do you want me to do? I could go mad in there like that! Like when I went to Equine Affair, there was nothing to look at. Solid walls on three sides, and a green wall past the front. I could smell and hear other horses, but I couldn't see anybody. Well, at times I could see the mule next to me's lower limbs and/or ears, as she attempted to scale the wall to get in with me. She didn't like the isolation, either. (Fortunately Mother spent a lot of time right outside the door with Aunt Karin, and when they were there I could put my head out and see others, and Mother took me out many times a day to graze or lunge or just walk around.)

By this point, you are wondering why any intelligent horse would be willing to subject themselves to a stall. Stalls aren't all bad. I mean, when I first met shavings, I was in love. So warm and comfortable in cold weather, compared to laying out on the frosty ground. And no backsplash! And it is convenient to have food and water right at hand. There's no bad weather, although sometimes odd noises.

To sum it up:

• Stalls are more likely to have food
• Stalls always have water
• Stalls are more likely to be shady in summer
• No one chases you when you are in a stall
• Stalls don't have rocks in them to trip on or hurt your feet
• There is no ice in stalls, or if there is it's just on your water bucket and the humans will come by several times a day to remove it and make sure your water is nice and warm
• Stalls in summer have a cooling breeze box, which Mother calls a "fan"
• In winter, there are less cold breezes in a stall

On the other hand, without a stall:

• You can see all around you at all times, or walk to a place you can see all around you at all times
• You can warm up by running about if you are cold
• You can huddle next to your herdmates for warmth, like penguins

From my old Nokota home. None of these horses is me. The one kind of reminds me of my mother, though. My horse mother, not Mother Mother.

• You can reach out and touch someone anytime you want (but the way the barn is set up at Aunt Marilyn's you can reach through the windows and confer, so that is not such a  strong point in favor of freedom... hmmm)
• You can scavenge for food over a broader area than a stall offers
• Fresh air and lovely landscape. If you're in a stall with poor maid service, it is way, way less than ideal
• You have freedom! You can do whatever you want, whenever you want, as long as what you want is there in the environment. Which all too often, it's not...

So, I suppose I have already shown you who is the Winner: Domestication

Of course, I have a triple wide bedded run-in on an acre with my Belle. Best of both worlds, although I wish I had more like 278 acres.

Oh, well.

Why am I here?

Mother met me like this:

What form I had was worms and hair, since my tooth bothered me so much I only ate because I had to. And I actually weighed more than when Mother met me in August, because she sent dewormers for a hundred horses. There were a lot of us in the bachelor band.

 See the ribs? yeah.

I was turned into a Ohio friendly package and sent to Mother a couple of days before Christmas. As it was about 7 weeks later, I was even thinner.

It took only getting my infected tooth out and some good food, deworming, and 3 months to look like this:

And me this summer, three and a half years later:

Of course, I did lose some color. There are always tradeoffs.

Dinner is Served!

Steps to feeding me, as undertaken by Mother:


Step 1: Set the mood... usually I get a good brushing, then turnout to munch on some green yumminess while Mother prepares my dinner. Pickings is slim in the small.

Step 2: Place feed bowl with adequate water in it on floor in feed room.

Step 3: Add apple cider vinegar.

Step 4: Put "grain" in to soak. At the moment, my grain in Empower Balance, which is a creepy color, especially soaked, but whatever.

Step 5: Open Smartpak strip of suppies. Stir, shake, or do the hokey-pokey to incorporate.

Step 6: Add a small scoop of my special red salt. Slightly scanty most days, slightly more if it has been hot out.

Step 7: Add my IR powder.

Step 8: Crumble up some of my Withers & Withers IR cookies onto the mush.

Step 9: Squirt a little more vinegar in there for insurance. Stir, shake, or do the hokey-pokey to incorporate.

Step 10: Re-procure me. I am usually watching and waiting as I graze so I may amble up casually at just the right time.

Step 11: Go into feed stall, stepping carefully past Jeanie, who stares at me with hostile yet hopeful eyes.

Step 12: Often the grain is waiting for me. If not, I must wait as Mother opens the door, then I have to step back if asked, and put my ears forward before she'll put the feeder down. Sometimes I cheat by turning my head a bit and only put the closest ear forward.... GIVE ME MY FOOD!!

Step 13: Eat my perfect dinner while Jeanie stares. She'll get to lick the bowl when I'm done. And she gets fed three times a day, and I only get one graining, so stop sticking up for her!



Steps to feeding me, as undertaken by one of the aunts:



Step 1: Open Smartpak strip into feeder. Scooch into pile.

Step 2: Plop some of Jeanie's soaked feed onto my suppies.

Step 3: Sprinkle my IR powder on.

Step 4: Maybe remember the apple cider vinegar, maybe not.

Step 5: Aunt Marilyn holds my feed pan so Belle doesn't share. Aunt Carol may, or she'll plop the pan down and expect me to fend for myself.

I much prefer that Mother comes to feed me! Plus, I always get my goodbye kiss and cookies, or Herballs, as the case may be.

I guess she's not such a bad cookie and care human after all.

Pink eye and other miracles

Mother has accepted the fact that I can and will remove the silly blue fly bonnet at will. We have returned to the system where she places SWAT strategically to deter flies from troubling my face.

It's kind of a linebacker look:

Last year's photo... don't get excited that my mane has grown back. 

And of course, it's important to keep those flies away from my ears:

In a somewhat related vein, Mother has only pulled three or four burrs from me this entire summer. The aunts' burdock eradication plan really helped a lot, and with the rain we've had through the summer, I haven't had to forage in as many rough places to find grass to eat. By this time last year, Mother had been de-burring for weeks on end and finally chopped all my hair off.

Mother has also successfully killed two bomber flies on me this year, and I didn't even flinch! I've finally figured out that she really isn't trying to hurt me, although sometimes her whacking is a little overzealous, if you ask me.

Perhaps Mother will bring my camera up sometime this weekend. She claims she has to find the old one and something about a sanitary card or something? I have no idea what she is talking about.

How could she have lost my old camera so fast?

sigh

She thinks the thorough hosing after the "waterless" cleaning qualifies as a miracle, too, but guess what?
I'm still rubbing my tail.

Squeaky Clean... part of me, anyway

Since I've not really stopped rubbing my tail, Mother decided yesterday to once again perform a waterless cleaning of my very private area.  That accomplished, she scrubbed up my tail, and some of my torso et cetera that had gotten waterless cleaning cleaner on it. Then while hosing that all off, the waterless cleaning became quite a bit more like a waterful cleaning.

She rinsed me thoroughly. Very thoroughly. I think there may still be water slogging around in there. However, I was a well behaved equine... I mean, after what happened the other week, I'm certainly not afraid of a little water!!

Tomorrow the chiropractor comes out for me and all the herd but the fat donkey, oh, and I believe my camera has arrived. Since Mother is unable to attend my chiro-ing, however, it seems there will be no actual footage of my spa experience. Hopefully the aunts will give me some cookies?

Probably not.

sigh


squeak    squeak     squeak*



*The sound of a squeaky clean Bif walking away.

The Great Compromise

When I first met Mother in North Dakota, she wandered among the bachelor band, meeting my cousins. After awhile, she and one of the hay men leaned against a big square bale, and discussed the various horses as they came up to them. Mother wondered about their families and temperaments, which ones had been halter broken, which ones had been gelded already.

I understood family, but halter breaking and gelding were unknown concepts. What could she mean? When I at last braved going up to near her, as so many of the others had and they seemed happy to do so, she pet me and I thought, "Wow, humans are good for something besides hay!" Frankly, I found humans more than a little scary for a long time. They smell so predatory, and they walk oddly, and they stare at you as if you're chicken and they want to eat you. No horse stares at you like that.

Anyway, Mother noticed the hole in my head. The hay man wasn't sure which family I belonged to, but said they could figure me out from the foal papers. She visited with me that day again with the young hay man, and again the next morning with a third hay man, all trying to figure out exactly who I was. Mother knew, though. She had already called me "Boyfriend" once or twice, trying to get my attention. Hey, that's me!

Time passed, moons waxed and waned, and I figured Mother was just a figment of my imagination. I didn't really want humans to touch me, although I am glad they brought hay. Only did I later learn that there were discussions about me that would dramatically affect my life. My identity was determined. I am the son of Target* (I could have told them that, if only they'd asked). OK, technically "a" son of Target... my brother Nahockey is a more famous Target son, since he is the Breyer model Nokota, but I am MUCH more handsome.

Just look at my excellent conformation!

That is not the picture I wanted Mother to use...

Mother came out to visit again in November, and she was as nice as I remembered. Mother worried about the hole in my face, and hoped to get it fixed. She asked if after my face was fixed she should leave me "intact" and donate me to the Conservancy, if they needed another Target stallion. They said they had enough of his line, so Mother was ready to have me prepared to ship to Ohio. After six years of life on broad North Dakota prairies, I was to become... domesticated.

The young hay man introduced me to halter, and rope. I learned to follow the human that held the rope. I learned to follow the hay man even into the moving stall (later, I found out this is called a trailer).  I learned that petting me was their way of being nice, and while it felt different than when Mother pet me, it was not unpleasant. A week or two later, the hay man loaded me and the Devlin Pony and Swirly Roan into the trailer, and we went on an "adventure".

We went to a strange building, with many strange, sharp smells. The other two left - one at a time- and then I went in. A stranger gave me a poke in the neck and I felt woozy and odd, and I collapsed. Speaking now as a horse of experience, this is not a big deal... humans do the big knock out whenever they plan to do something really invasive, like stick your head into a big radiation machine or cut a hole in your skull and dig around, or fill your leg with salt water and cameras and scalpels and scrape scrape scrape. At the time, though, I had never experienced anything like it, and I was mortified... How could I avoid predators, if I was just a little heap of Bif?

The young hay man put a piece of clothing over my eyes, and I could see nothing. I lay still as the stranger removed portions of my anatomy that had nothing wrong with them. When he finished, the hay man removed the shirt from my face, and I immediately surged to my feet. There was some startlement on their parts... I guess horses usually don't just leap up like that. I, however, wanted to be ready to escape, lest these odd predators (apparently intent on eating me a section at a time) were not satisfied with their pound(s) of flesh and decided to start hacking again.

I loaded quite willingly with my brethren, away from that strange place, and back to the ranch. I was sore and tired and a smidge upset. The next day, I was loaded again on the trailer with the same two companions, and off we went on an interminable journey, that ended at Mother.

Now, Mother has told me if that terrible thing hadn't happened, life in Ohio would have had to be quite different. In fact, I probably couldn't have come to Ohio at all. I wouldn't be able to go out with mares, and it would have been difficult for her to have found a place I was allowed to live at. I am not sure why... I am the same horse I always was. If I had stayed in North Dakota, and gotten a band of my own... well, with my leg bothering me as it ended up doing, I wouldn't have been able to keep up with my mares, much less keep all of them from other interloping stallions.

I am glad, though, that I am with Mother... One learns that life is a series of compromises.

And here, there are cookies. There were no cookies in North Dakota. So I guess it was worth it...





* "Target", a dominant blue roan stallion who was born in the Little Missouri badlands circa 1980 and died of old age during the winter of 2001. In his prime, Target was considered an "outlaw" by the National Park Service staff at Theodore Roosevelt National Park, who tried unsuccessfully to capture him for several years. He matured during the height of the NPS program to remove original wild stallions from the Park and replace them with domestic animals. Target built a large harem of mares by taking them from stallions that the Park favored, and became a target of their removal campaign-hence his name. He was finally caught in 1991, and lived for another ten years on the Kuntz Ranch. But he always remained wild, never letting his guard down and relaxing into the relative comforts of captivity. He grew old and grey with his head up and his nostrils flaring, ready to run, at the first sight of a human. ~from www.nokotahorse.org

That which you fear shall come to pass

So, this was that sight that greeted Mother this evening. 

She was not amused. And, I admit the whole tugging, pulling, hair-yanking nonsense day after day to remove the burrs is getting well past old.

I was artistic at least, don't you think? 

Even my braids didn't help much. They did make it easier to comb out, but they still attracted burrs.

Don't forget the back end...

So...

I have been shorn.

Mother says my neck is still nice enough to pull off the no hair look. I blame Mother for my neck not being as pretty as it used to be... my tiny teeny hole hay bag is causing the underside of my neck to become more muscular.

My tail now...

I admit, it is nice to have Mother curry where my mane grows from... the lightness, the freedom. And the flies have been not too bad this year, so I didn't really need all that extra hair, anyway. She said my forelock wasn't helping much when it was just a clump of burrs; I suppose she has a point. And I am really excited to not have to spend anywhere from a quarter of an hour up to two hours an evening being deburred, perhaps unbraided and rebraided... sigh. What price freedom?

I blame it on Fenway Bartholomule, personally. He made it look so chic, how was Mother to resist?

Type C Personality

There are several personality types out there, you know... Type A, always animated, agitated and anxious. Then there is Type B... broadly speaking, the basic barely breathing bore. Then there is Type C. Mother is a Type C.

Now, that is partly because Mother caters to me. She cleans my stall, she cleans my water buckets and feed tub, she cleans my coat, and even my hooves. She cooks me dinner, provides me with cookies... as you can tell, that is a lot of Cs.

However, the C also stands for controlling, and Mother does that a lot, especially lately. She counts calories for me (not necessary, truly), has cut back my good hay, although increasing my crummy hay... life is all about trade offs once one accepts domestication, I have discovered.

She controls not only my food, and my turnout times, but also what could/should be leisure time with her... she likes to tell me where to go, how quickly to go there, and sometimes it is just around in circles around her! Today, we were ground driving in the back pasture, and we kept disturbing the deer grazing there. I admit, even without the deer, I was feeling a little frisky. I kept trying to encourage her to let me trot, but NO. So at one point, even though I'd seen the deer plenty of times already, I decided to make the drive more interesting because it had crept decidedly into B mode... I did a tiny dance, and a little levitation of the front end. Mother made no comment, just requested me to walk on.

Later she mentioned it was a pretty little rear, not as balanced as a levade, but not bad. Since I didn't hit the lines going up, and I was so light, and I was already in an obvious mood, she ignored my high spirits.

There are advantages to being a horse that nothing is expected of; there are no goals to strive for. If I chose to rear in the lines, really, what's the harm? I'm not pulling on her, I'm not endangering her. Well, that's my view, anyway.

I am awakening her to a whole new way of enjoying horsedom. Now, if we could just continue the trend of relinquishing the control side of the C, and get her to concentrate more on the catering side of C... like COOKIES!!!!